Scanning food barcodes with smartphone

I dont post alot about my other kids, but I have 3.   My eldest son is about to turn 8 and hes a busy kid, with Tennis, Swimming, Athletics and school.  My middle child is my only daughter, shes in kindergarten; also very busy with swimming, kindy, tots athletics and a real desire for martial arts we just cant seem to squeeze it all in.   And then theres the hurricane, my D - child is willful (to be kind about it!) 

Anything to save time and headaches, is a saviour to me.   When dealing with diabetes, I need easy.

So I got onto this app on my smart phone, called My Fitness Pal.  You can plug in the foods you are looking for manually to see nutritional breakdown and add them to a diary if needed.   (Im interested in counting carbohydrates primarily).   The best part is a little barcode button.   When you press that, you can literally scan any food with a barcode right onto your phone and VOILA!   Carbohydrate count appears.    

Awesome stuff.

Did I mention its free?


http://www.myfitnesspal.com/

Rushing out of target today I thought, frickety frick, no idea how many carbs in that 35g mini m&m tube.   Nothing written on it either.  I spy a barcode.  BINGO> out comes the phone, click on my fitness pal app, bring up the food diary, hit barcode, line up the code until i see it on the screen, red line turns green, phone beeps, theres a read out of the nutritional info with carbs clearly listed.   Just love it.   Thought Id put it out there incase anyone else on the planet hadnt gotten onto it yet either!

Hope you are all having a good week.  

A week and a half with Type 1 Diabetes

This picture has come up on my facebook page several times as well as JDRF advocacy page and I think it deserves some time.  

Think on this- its only one and a half weeks living with diabetes.  

Non invasive blood sugar testing

So Im on facebook, um, occassionally sometimes okay, quite a bit.   I get a bunch of really interesting updates and one was on the accuracy of a relatively new non invasive blood sugar testing instrument.   Forgive me if this post is awkward, Ive been up since 4.30am!    More on that later,  it was never my intention to make this blog about diabetes news or advertise products etc, but wouldnt you know it, one of the most popular blogs Ive written is regarding the Animas Vibe.   Good news, its already included on the Australian private health cover prosthesis list, and the grapevine told me it would be released Down Under in the second half of the year :)   Woo!  Great news for Austrayyyyans.

I digress. Somehow it gives me hope and comfort to know theres scientists and researchers working not only on a cure, but on better management tools for my son to use in his lifetime.     Pricking your childs finger and making them bleed sucks.    Especially when your strip errors, or you hit a calloused spot and cant get any blood and have to re-do.  The early days that would make me cry.   Pricking my sleeping baby was...  awful.   The kid couldnt even catch a break in his sleep.   Sad.   Whats even sadder is now Ive done thousands neither He nor I flinch anymore.

Well, this technology is being developed by GROVE Instruments.   It uses near infared glucose detection.     What is it, and What does it mean?

No blood collection
No lancets
No pain
No strips
No swabs
Battery operated
Fits in pockets
Takes 20 seconds to measure real time blood glucose
See in the picture shes testing her earlobe?   Also you can test the fingers according to their site.

Incase you havent heard, theres also special tattoo ink by Draper Laboratories (nano ink particles) that changes colour according to blood glucose.  This is from TechCrunch.com website -

                         If the molecules mostly latch onto glucose, the ink appears yellow. If glucose levels are low, the molecule latches onto the glucose mimic, turning the ink purple. A healthy level of glucose has a “funny orangey,” color, according to Clark. The sampling process repeats itself every few milliseconds.

Theres also people working on using the fluid in the eyes to measure glucose.  Apparently it worked in rabbits.    Heres how the LOL cats do it.   

Hope you all get some much needed rest.  Have a great weekend everyone!

No, I didnt feed him too much sugar

I accompanied my daughter to a playdate with a kindy friend.  Sweet.  The 'friends' mother ran into one of her friends.   We were introduced and she was invited to stay.   This lady asked me questions and said things about diabetes that challenged me.   Challenged me not to yell at her.  In a previous blog I mentioned how talking about it, telling people, educating people is where Im at.  I dont cry anymore..but I may out of frustration.

What on earth did you feed him?

I had started to answer, he was a baby.   He predominantly breastfed, but had some finger foods and puree fruits and veges.   

Then, the penny.dropped.com.

Suddenly I saw where it was a going - a wicked winding path leading me all the way to self guilt and blame.  [Which btw I never bought and never will].  Was she trying in all her splendid maternal superiority to be sure she wasnt such a bad mother and caused her child to 'catch' type 1 diabetes through too much sugar.  

Duh.  The public needs more education, dude.

Yup I pinned him down and jammed copious sugar into him at 8 months. Yup thats it, you got it.   Clearly she didnt know that type 1 diabetes isnt a lifestyle disease like type 2.  I tried to say simply that food has nothing to do with it until the diagnosis and managing the disease.

As for the amputated legs/Dad died at the driving wheel while hypoglycaemic/cousin went blind I zoned out.    For her safety.

Endo appt this week, we were told to give no basal insulin at night.   Reuben isnt to be corrected before bed, as hes dropping like crazy.   The endo said it was highly unusual.   He said perhaps the day time basal is running longer than 12 hours?  Who knows Levemir only just got FDA approval for 2-5year olds and weve been using it 2 + years already and it never ran over 12 hours before.   Apparently the honeymoon is over and Dr isnt sure why the night hypos are happening.   Its tiring and bit scary.    So we are to do this 2 weeks to check our Novorapid ratio of 1:30 is correct for dinner.

Long story short, its just a thrilling part of the rollercoaster that is diabetes in our toddler.